LONDON, Dec 14 (Reuters) – Private equity firms are on the
hunt for cheap Spanish companies that can give them a
springboard into fast-growing Latin America, raising hopes for a
pick-up in deals next year as bank-related sales slowly get off
the ground.

Spain’s financial crisis has cut the price of its corporates,
but also effectively frozen local lending for private equity
deals as banks shrink their loan books.

While the lack of debt and the gloomy domestic outlook are
putting many dealmakers off, others see a golden opportunity to
pick up bargains with little competition.

“Hypothetically, if you can find any company where its
reliance on the economy is de minimis, you might find yourself a
great deal,” said Scott Freidheim, Europe CEO of Investcorp.

With the Spanish economy on its knees, buyers want companies
that make most of their earnings from emerging markets such as
Latin America, or are in areas such as healthcare and telecoms,
seen as resilient in the face of restricted consumer spending.

Investcorp, KKR and Bain Capital are leading the
vanguard of private equity buyers into the Iberian peninsula.

Just a day later, KKR made an offer for a stake in NH
Hoteles, which has more than half its hotels outside Spain,
through bonds that would convert into equity – a structure that
can be used to work around the lack of financing available for
Spain’s corporates.

Bain Capital made its first foray into the Spanish market in
October with a deal worth 1 billion euros for call centre,
Atento, which has a strong presence in Latin America.

But not all private equity houses are ploughing in.

Mid-market house 3i, which is cutting costs as part
of a global restructuring of its underperforming business, is
pulling out of Spain, providing an opportunity for rivals.

Its retreat has yielded a new deal for Investcorp, which
bought Esmaglass, a maker of colours and glazes for floor and
wall tiles with a strong international presence, from the
London-listed group in the summer.

3i still has eight investments in Spain, including funeral
services group Mémora Inversiones Funerarias, which the firm
will gradually sell as part of its retreat.

BANKING BONANZA?

Private equity houses and hedge funds have been circling
Spain for months in the hope that a banking sector shakeout will
deliver a bonanza of real estate and distressed company assets
at rock bottom prices.

Spanish lender Popular this week sold a 1.14 billion
euros portfolio of troubled consumer loans to a consortium of
international investors, in a sign sales are beginning to pick
up.

More deals in the property sector or on other portfolios such
as consumer loans are likely to take place early next year,
bankers have said.

But with Spanish property prices set to keep falling,
international investors have so far been reluctant to invest in
Spain’s so-called “bad bank”.

“We have not seen any fire sales from savings and loan
companies. We have not seen any rush to sell,” said Emilio
Domingo, partner at consultancy firm Bain & Co.

That paralysis extends to the corporate M&A segment where a
wide gulf between what sellers expected and buyers were prepared
to pay stifled many potential deals, he said.

PRICES TO KEEP FALLING

Speaking at a conference in London recently, Carlyle Group
co-founder Bill Conway said prices in Spain are among the
cheapest in Europe, at an average of seven times earnings, 10
percent lower than the 10-year average.

While far from the bargain basement prices some would like,
it is below the 8.1 times average for deals across Europe in
2012, according to figures from data firm Preqin.

The frozen banking markets and shrinking economy will
continue to force those prices down, dealmakers say.

While few predict a rapid improvement in bank lending, debt
is increasingly available from other sources – when Investcorp
bought Esmaglass it borrowed from specialist debt funds rather
than banks.

And that could help pave the way for more sales next year.

“I expect 2013 hopefully to be a better year because some of
those seller expectations are coming down, and some of the
buyers have understood that the fire sale is not happening,”
Domingo said.

LONDON, Dec 5 (Reuters) – German group Intersnack is to buy
KP Snacks, Britain’s second-largest savoury snacks maker, in a
deal that could pave the way for the sale of the rest of United
Biscuits by its private equity owners.

While no financial detail was disclosed, two people familiar
with the situation said on Wednesday the deal for the maker of
Hula Hoops and KP Nuts was worth more than 500 million pounds
($805 million).

The deal showed how private equity houses are breaking up
their largest companies, bought at the height of the buyout
boom, because they cannot find takers for the whole business.

Blackstone and PAI had tried two years ago to sell all of
United Biscuits, a business they bought in 2006 for 1.6 billion
pounds.

The sale leaves them still in control of the larger biscuits
business, which makes McVitie’s Hobnobs and Jacob’s Cream
Crackers and has 30 percent of the British market.

The owners are hoping the sale will mean the biscuits arm,
which has 180 million pounds earnings before interest, tax,
depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA), will attract buyers not
interested in salted and savoury snacks, one of the people said.

International operators, incluukpding Chinese group Bright
Food and U.S. companies Campbell Soup and
Kellogg’s, had shown interest in the whole group in 2010
when the private equity firms investigated a sale and could be
tempted again.

However, a sale of the biscuits business is unlikely to
launch before the end of 2013 at the earliest, the person said.

Other private equity houses are following a similar route
with some of their largest companies, hoping that splitting them
up will lead to more profitable exits.

KKR and Permira are carving up German
broadcaster ProSiebenSat.1 to make it more
attractive and digestible for potential buyers.

The price paid for KP Snacks equates to nine times its 2011
EBITDA of 56 million pounds. The business, which also sells the
McCoy’s and Nik Naks brands, has annual sales of 280 million
pounds and employs about 1,500 people.

Privately-owned Intersnack, whose brands include Pom-Bear
potato snacks and Penn State pretzels has turnover of about 100
million euros ($131 million) in Britain, said the deal would
allow it to grow further and strengthen its position.

Intersnack, which has operations across Europe, is aiming
for sales of 1.7 billion euros in 2012.

The KP Snacks deal, which is expected to close in the first
quarter of 2013, will be financed with Intersnack’s shareholder
equity and a syndicated loan underwritten by Commerzbank, HSBC
Trinkaus & Burkhardt, HSBC and UniCredit.

LONDON, Nov 29 (Reuters) – ProSiebenSat.1 is
expecting two bids for its Nordic TV channels, valued at more
than 1 billion euros ($1.3 billion), five people familiar with
the situation said.

The disposal of the division could pave the way for the rest
of the German broadcaster, as its private equity owners KKR
and Permira carve the company up to make it
more attractive to prospective buyers.

Rival TV group Discovery Communications and
private equity group Providence Equity Partners are expected to
table bids for ProSieben’s Scandinavian assets, which include
Sweden’s Kanal 9, Norway’s TV Norge and Kanal 4 in Denmark, the
people said.

Bids are due on Friday and ProSieben is seeking about 1.3
billion euros for the business, the people added.

Private equity house Nordic Capital is keen on the business
but is uncertain to table a final bid since its bidding partner,
Swedish media group Bonnier, pulled out, one of the people said.

KKR and Permira bought ProSieben in 2007 for 6.8 billion
euros, making it one of the largest buyouts in Europe.

But they are carving it up to make it more digestible for
prospective buyers, including rival buyout firms who find banks
unwilling to lend as freely as they did before the crisis.

The rest of ProSieben would be focused on Germany, also
making it more attractive to potential buyers than a
pan-European group.

Shares in ProSieben, which remains a listed group despite
KKR and Permira owning 88 percent of the voting shares, were up
0.6 percent at 22.5 euros at 1432 GMT, giving it a market
capitalisation of more than 2.4 billion euros.

Dutch publisher Telegraaf Media Group owns the
remaining 12 percent of the voting shares in the company, which
including debt, is valued at more that 4.5 billion euros.

The private equity house, which focuses on buying mid-sized companies in Northern Europe, aims to pick advisory banks early next year with a view to launching the sale process within the first half of the year, the people added.

Minimax, which employs over 6,200 people and makes a range of fire extinguishing and detection systems, could attract U.S. technology groups Honeywell (HON.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and United Technologies (UTX.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) as well as rival private equity groups, two of the people said.

An initial public share offer of the business is also an option, one of the people said.

A spokeswoman for IK declined to comment.

IK bought Minimax in 2006 from Investcorp for an undisclosed amount, financing the deal with 530 million euros in bank lending, according to data from Thomson Reuters LPC.

At that point the company had revenues of less than 500 million euros a year, but it has since grown considerably, taking over U.S. rival Viking Group in 2009.

It is now the world’s third largest fire equipment supplier, and is market leader in the United States and China, generating the vast majority of sales from industrial fire protection systems.

The prospective sale comes at an important time for IK Investment Partners as it asks investors to back its latest buyout fund, for which it has raised about half of the 1.7 billion euros it is after.

However, recent efforts to sell companies have gone poorly. It was forced to shelve the sales of industrials firm Schenck Process, sports pitch maker Sport Group and glass manufacturer Flabeg when bids fell short of targets, people had previously said.

IK, with roots in the Nordic region, has also been at the centre of a long-running tax investigation by Sweden’s Tax Agency.

Those investigations have resulted in bills for hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes for the firm’s dealmakers, including a bill and penalty of more than $100 million for IK’s executive chairman Bjorn Saven.

They are drawn by a youthful and booming population that
could almost double to 2 billion by 2050, some of the fastest
growing economies in the world, and an emerging middle class
which wants everything from banks and insurance, to places to
eat out.

That consumer boom is at the heart of Carlyle’s deal on
Wednesday for a minority stake in Tanzania-based agricultural
commodities firm Export Trading Group, one of the world’s
largest cashew nut traders, which employs more than 7,000 people
across 30 African countries.

It’s also behind Emerging Capital Partners investment in
Nairobi Java House, the largest so-called casual dining
restaurant in Kenya, twice the size of its nearest rival. But
this is no mega-chain. It has just 14 restaurants.

“Africa is an emerging market in a similar fashion to Asia
or Latin America and the story behind it is growth and the
emerging middle classes. And that’s what we are focusing on,
ways to tap into that growth,” said Marlon Chigwende, managing
director and Co-Head of the Carlyle Sub-Saharan Africa Fund.

Private equity firms and their investors that long shied
away from sub-Saharan Africa, worried about losing money on
deals in countries in the grip of war and corruption, are
changing their views on the risks as democracy takes hold.

And with portfolios focused on Europe and North America
scarred by poor returns from deals that firms paid to much for
and financed with too much cheap debt, they have been under
pressure to find better deals.

But Africa has been slower than some had hoped.

Some $698 million of deals have been done in sub-Saharan
Africa in 2012 so far, compared with more than $49 billion in
the United States, according to data from the Emerging Markets
Private Equity Association (EMPEA) and PitchBook.

It is also far short of deal totals for seven of the last
nine years, EMPEA data shows, reflecting how hard new deals are
to find and concerns that underdeveloped equity markets mean
that, when the time comes, companies will be hard to sell.

“In the last year, we have had rather more talk than
action,” said Lord Mark Malloch-Brown, former United Nations
deputy secretary general and now chairman Europe, Middle East
and Africa for FTI Consulting. “Africa has been edged out Asia
and bargain hunting in Europe.”

Malloch-Brown is also chairman of private equity-backed
agri-business GADCO, based in Ghana.

But that could change as firms eye long-term growth as
opposed to short term opportunism.

The arrival of groups like Carlyle is seen as a vote of
confidence in the region’s development – from political
stability to improving capital markets and increased focus from
large corporations that could ultimately buy many companies.

“For the next 30 years, East Africa is going to be rocking,”
said Ahmed Heikal, Chairman and founder of Citadel Capital.

GROWTH

Deals like Emerging Capital Partners’ Nairobi Java House are
small and require more capital to build them up rather than to
acquire them. The returns from such businesses come from fast
growth, at 25 percent a year, rather than financial engineering.

And those long-term returns are now drawing mainstream
Western pension funds and endowments.

International Finance Corporation, a part of the World Bank,
said annualised returns from its Africa private equity portfolio
of 31 funds were 17.8 percent, more than 5 percentage points
higher than the emerging markets index.

“There is a set of about 500 investors who are looking to
make small strategic investments in Africa,” said Jonathan Bond,
partner at emerging markets private equity firm Actis.

University of Texas Investment Management Company has two
investments in firms focused on Africa – Actis and Helios – and
based on those results wants to add one or two more, said Lindel
Eakman, managing director, private markets investments.

Others hope to make their first step.

“We have been spending a lot of time thinking about (private
equity in) Africa and we expect to do something very soon,” said
John Powers, President and CEO of Stanford Management Company,
which manages $25 billion in assets for the U.S. University.

As a result, fundraising for sub-Saharan private equity
funds could more than double to a record $3 billion next year,
estimates Antoine Drean, chief executive of Palico, a company
that helps private equity firms market their funds to investors.

But it would still lag emerging markets as a whole.

Private equity funds raised for emerging markets, including
China and India, increased about nine-fold between 2003 and 2011
to nearly $40 billion, according to EMPEA.

Africa’s industry could grow four times in size before
matching that of Brazil, said Hurley Doddy, founder and co-CEO
of Emerging Capital Partners.

The arrival of large buyout houses like Carlyle that has set
up offices in Johannesburg and Lagos, and KKR which is planning
to set up shop in Africa, gives another potential sale route.

“I don’t think anyone likes more competition (but) there is
a lot of Africa and I do have some companies to sell these guys
when they come,” Doddy said.

LONDON (Reuters) – Advent International has amassed 8.5 billion euros in one of the biggest private equity fundraisings since the financial crisis, helped by the U.S. group’s strong track record on returns.

Private equity firms, which raise money to buy businesses to sell them later at a profit, have had a difficult time since the crisis partly because bank financing for their debt-funded deals has become scarce and returns have come under pressure.

The buy-out sector raised some $600 billion a year in 2007 and 2008, but brought in less than $300 million in the last 12 months, according to data group Preqin.

But Advent, whose deals include buying Royal Bank of Scotland’s (RBS.L: Quote, Profile, Research) payment processing business WorldPay, has bucked the trend after showing investors it had outperformed the pack with superior returns.

Advent’s sixth fund, raised in 2008, has delivered a 12.4 percent annualised return, according to figures to the end of March from one of its investors, California State Teachers’ Retirement System.

That compares with a 10.8 percent annualised return for rival CVC’s 2008 fund, and a 5.8 percent return from Permira’s 2006 fund, according to the same data.

“We recognised on going out to raise a fund that it is quite a challenging environment. There are a lot very difficult decisions being made on the part of (investors) today on who they will fund and who they will not fund,” Bob Brown, managing director and global head of limited partner services.

Advent has raised far more than the 7 billion euros planned initially, making its new fund the biggest since it was founded in 1984.

The new fund – Advent’s seventh Global Private Equity Fund – cements the Boston-based company’s position as one of the leading global buyouts firms and gives it money to spend for the next five years on medium to large-sized companies worth between 200 million and 2 billion euros.

While a handful of firms, including Blackstone and CVC, have raised larger funds since the onset of the credit crisis, Advent has been faster than its rivals, taking around nine months to raise its new pool of capital.

Private equity firms including Apax Partners , Cinven and Permira all started raising capital before Advent — which does deals in Europe, North America and Asia from its flagship fund — and are still fundraising.

EUROPE FOCUS

Advent has agreed a swathe of deals in Europe in the last month, including the buyouts of German retailer Douglas (DOHG.DE: Quote, Profile, Research), Dutch medical supply company Mediq (MEDIQ.AS: Quote, Profile, Research) and Polish retailer EKO Holding EKOP.WA.

The firm has historically invested about 60 percent of the capital raised in Europe, said Brown.

“We like the fact that some people are quite negative on Europe and some are turning their backs on the market,” Brown said.

Some U.S. rivals, such as TPG , have reduced their emphasis on buyout deals in Europe, preferring to look for deals in other regions. Others like KKR (KKR.N: Quote, Profile, Research) have said they see attractive deals to be done on the continent.

Advent also buys companies in Eastern Europe and Latin America through dedicated funds for those regions.

However, not all forays into new regions have been successful for the firm.

Advent closed its office in Japan last year and wound up the $725 million fund it had for deals in the country, finding it impossible to penetrate the private equity market.

Advent was founded by Chairman Peter Brooke, who spun the group out of TA Associates, a private equity firm that specialises in taking minority stakes in fast-growing companies.

LONDON, Nov 12 (Reuters) – U.S. private equity firm Advent
International has raised 8.5 billion euros ($10.8 billion) for
its latest fund, one of the largest pools of capital raised for
buyouts since the financial crisis.

Advent, whose deals include buying RBS’s payment
processing business WorldPay, raised more than the 7 billion
euros it initially planned for in its seventh Global Private
Equity Fund, making it the firm’s biggest fund since it was
founded in 1984.

The new fund cements Boston-based Advent’s position as one
of the leading global buyouts firms and gives it capital to
spend for the next five years on medium to large-sized companies
worth between 200 million and 2 billion euros.

Advent has agreed a swathe of deals in the last month,
including the buyouts of German retailer Douglas,
Dutch medical supply company Mediq and Polish
retailer EKO Holding.

Advent announced details of its fundraising on Monday. The
firm, which raises capital in euros reflecting its European
focus, raised its latest fund more quickly than its peers, many
of whom are also in the market looking for capital from
investors for new deals.

Private equity firms including Apax Partners,
Cinven and Permira all started raising funds
before Boston-based Advent, which also does deals in North
America and Asia from its flagship fund.

LONDON/STOCKHOLM, Nov 7 (Reuters) – Sweden is widening a
probe into the tax affairs of private equity dealmakers, as part
of a clampdown which has already led to bills for hundreds of
millions of dollars of back taxes.

The Scandinavian country has become the largest private
equity market in Europe in recent years, relative to the size of
its economy, with deals worth almost $5 billion agreed in 2011.

But the boom, which has continued with recent deals for
alarms firm Securitas Direct and cable group Com Hem, drew the
attention of Sweden’s tax authority.

Now many of the industry’s top earners are bracing for back
tax claims as investigators trawl through tax returns and
earnings declarations going back to 2005.

“We are working on another couple of private equity firms,”
Goran Haglund, tax auditor at the Swedish Tax Agency, said,
adding tax bills could be issued by Christmas.

Around the world, private equity bosses are often better
paid even than investment bankers and the biggest part of their
pay – performance fees known as carried interest for making
profits on deals – is taxed at lower rates than income tax.

For private equity firms and their partners, who earn
multi-million dollar fees on buying and selling companies, the
tax savings by exploiting such loopholes can be significant.

But the Swedish Tax Agency wants to tax the majority of
private equity bonuses at the highest income tax rate of 55
percent, not at the capital gains rate of up to 30 percent.

Private equity partners argue they deserve preferential
treatment because they are betting their own money. But many
firms only contribute between 1 and 3 percent of the capital in
a fund, while taking 20 percent of the profits as bonuses.

Sweden’s private equity industry has been under scrutiny
since 2007, when a spate of high-profile deals, including the
buyouts of healthcare businesses Capio and Gambro, led to a
pilot study into Nordic Capital and IK Investment Partners.

Tax authorities noticed private equity firms were paying tax
at low rates or, in some cases, not at all. And the ensuing
crackdown is being fought by the private equity industry, which
argues it is unfair particularly because it is retrospective.

The crackdown could make Sweden one of harshest tax regimes
for private equity in the world, but is in tune with global
moves to target buyout bosses and close tax loopholes.

RETROSPECTIVE INCREASE

“Our tax authority is trying to change the interpretation of
the law and is attempting to radically increase the taxation of
the partners retrospectively,” said Marie Reinius of the Swedish
Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.

The association represents 126 private equity and venture
capital firms, as well as private equity investors.

“There are lots of countries looking at (bonuses) and how
(they) should be taxed (but) those countries are looking into
how it should be taxed in the future,” Reinius said.

Nearby Denmark already taxes buyout bonuses as income and
Norway is investigating its own private equity industry.

And in private equity’s largest market, the United States,
some predict a tougher tax regime as reelected President Barack
Obama seeks to plug the budget deficit. The carried interest
break costs the United States an estimated $18 billion a year.

Obama has said he favours eliminating the tax break which
lets private equity executives pay tax at the capital gains rate
- just 15 percent in the United States – rather than the top
ordinary income tax of 35 percent.

“I think carried interest was on the table whoever won,”
Black told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference. “The fact
is we have a big deficit and both parties are going to have to
look at different sources of revenues.”

The Swedish Tax Agency’s Haglund declined to say which firms
or individuals would receive tax claims, but EQT, the buyout
firm backed by the Wallenberg family, and Nordic specialist
Altor are expected to face bills, some tax experts say.

No-one at either firm could be reached for comment.

BIG BILLS

At least eight firms, including international players, can
expect to have their affairs probed as the Agency allocates some
2,500 working days to the inquiry next year, Haglund said -
equivalent to 13 or 14 full-time employees, compared with three
or four part-timers at the start of the probe.

Some have already felt the effects.

After recalculating incomes for 2007 and 2008, the tax
agency hit 19 Nordic Capital executives with bills totaling $118
million, and penalties of nearly $32 million at the end of 2010,
based on total earnings of $231.2 million.

Co-founder Robert Andreen alone was slapped with a $35.1
million bill and $1.3 million penalty, after the Agency
calculated he had made some $78 million in those two years.

Yet this tax bill is dwarfed by the one that Bjorn Saven,
executive chairman of IK Investment Partners, received a year
later. He has been told to pay $77 million in back taxes and a
penalty of $30.8 million for 2005 to 2008, with the Agency
calculating he earned more than $147 million in the period.

Nordic Capital, Andreen, IK and Saven declined to comment.

The firms are contesting the tax demands through the courts
and have yet to pay anything towards the bills, which is fueling
public anger and in turn sustaining the public process.

Despite private equity’s claims to create wealth for
retirees, whose pension funds put money into the industry, and
that it invests in companies and creates new jobs, there is
acceptance among some that things will change.

“These are high amounts and our industry has been bad at
justifying what we do and why it is valuable to society,” said a
partner at one of the firms who has been subject to a tax bill.
“I think that is the challenge for us.”

MILAN/LONDON, Nov 2 (Reuters) – The private equity owners of
Italy’s Avio are pressing ahead with talks to sell the airplane
engine parts maker, as a planned listing looks less likely,
sources close to the deal said.

In May Avio revived plans to go public, filing to list on
the Milan bourse, but the following month sources told Reuters
the company had postponed the offering for the second time in a
year due to market conditions.

Although Europe’s moribund new listings market has started
to show some signs of life after months of inactivity due to the
euro zone debt crisis, the outlook is far from robust and many
companies are still exploring alternative options.

A consortium of buyers made up of private equity funds CVC
Capital Partners and Clessidra, and state-backed Fondo
Strategico Italiano (FSI), are now pushing ahead with talks to
buy Avio, four so u rces close to the deal said, with an agreement
possible before the end of the year.

“The market conditions are there to complete the deal. In
particular, the bond market has reopened in the U.S. which would
allow a buyout to be funded,” said one source close to the deal.

Avio is owned by BCV Investments, in which Cinven private
equity has a majority. Cinven bought Avio in 2006 in a deal that
valued the company at about 2.6 billion euros.

In May, Finmeccanica said it had agreed to sell
the 14 percent stake it holds in Avio via BCV to FSI as part of
a planned listing.

Three of the sources said an initial public offering was no
longer on the cards, although the company has regulatory
approval to list up until the middle of 2013 so this would still
be an option if plans for a sale fell through.

“I don’t see any acceleration that would lead to an
agreement in one or two weeks. But perhaps something will be
agreed by the end of the year,” one of the sources said of the
planned sale.

Avio, which supplies engine parts for the Eurofighter
Typhoon and engine makers General Electric and Rolls
Royce, has previously been in talks with other potential
bidders including France’s Safran but the sources said
the government did not want Avio to fall into foreign hands.

Cinven and CVC declined to comment, while Avio and Clessidra
were not available.

LONDON, Oct 31 (Reuters) – Three private equity firms are
left in the running for Dutch trust and corporate management
business Intertrust Group after Carlyle and Goldman Sachs
Private Equity dropped out, banking sources said on Wednesday.

Blackstone, Cinven and Pamplona are preparing to submit
second round bids on Nov. 7 for Intertrust, the banking sources
said. The firm is being sold in an auction process by private
equity company Waterland.

The buyout has attracted a lot of interest from banks all
vying to finance the deal after disappointing levels of
leveraged buyout activity so far this year, bankers say.

Blackstone and Cinven had both separately considered teaming
up with HG Capital, which owns Intertrust’s Amsterdam-based
rival ATC, in a bid to merge ATC with Intertrust. But this did
not materialise, so Blackstone and Cinven are submitting bids on
a standalone basis, three of the sources said.

Carlyle, Cinven, Blackstone and Pamplona declined to comment
and Goldman Sachs Private Equity was not immediately available
for comment.

The auction process is being run by ING and bids submitted
on Nov. 7 are due to have committed financing in place from
banks to back the buyout. It is unlikely to be the final round
of bids as more due diligence needs to be done on the company,
some of the banking sources said.

It will be backed by 400 million to 500 million euros of
debt provided either all through senior leveraged loans or
through a combination of senior leveraged loans and mezzanine
loans, depending on which buyout house is successful.

Waterland bought Intertrust in September 2009, backed by
around 140 million euros of debt. It acquired Walkers Management
Services (WMS) earlier this year, at which point the company
refinanced its debts and got an additional acquisition loan,
bringing Intertrust’s total debt to 250 million euros.

Founded in 1952, Intertrust has more than 1,000 employees in
over 20 countries worldwide. Its core business is to set up and
manage holding companies, Waterland said on its website.